who is currently the most "cutting-edge" director?

Oh, come on; there's gotta be SOMEONE!

I'll toss out a few names--

Harmony Korine, Todd Solondz, Jem Cohen, Darren Aronofsky, Spike Jonze, David O. Russell, Guy Maddin, David Gordon Green, Matthew Barney, Nick Zedd, Brian Frye, Craig Baldwin.....

Who do you think is cinema's greatest living pioneer?

wow....the sad state of modern cinema....

In that case I vote for myself. Jay Blanchard is the cinema's greatest living pioneer. Of all time. Until someone posts...

what makes someone cutting edge? david gordon green, for example, does nothing i can think of as "cutting edge" at all, except maybe the acting techniques he uses for his films. (which is, franly, a bit annoying)

cutting-edge would have to be someone who can bring independent/experimental values into a popular setting. im not sure there any boundaries left except that one.

why aronofsky?

i really cant think of any. noe? miike?

those are two pretty good candidates actually.

okay, we're getting there....

I'm certainly not posing any of the folks I listed as anyone I would rank, but just as fodder for discussion (which the Aronfsky dismissal is obviously doing). I would, however, posit the first three in the list as potential candidates.

i think korine definitely - love or hate him, hes certainly at the edge of contemporary american cinema.also, i can never help being impressed by his age - gummo at 21, wasnt it?

solondz i feel inclined to agree with, thouh im not sure i could really justify it.maybe im just oversimplifying though, finding it more comfortable nominating korine as he makes films which are more obviously 'cutting-edge'.

barney couldnt really be argued with, although it could drag in a whole slew of other directors who are more generaly considered video artists.is barney viewed as seperate from someone like paul mccarthy due simply to the scale and cost of his work, and the (relativley) heavy distribution of his films?i saw the cremaster cycle in a ccinema, and for me that was the point were the whole film/vidoe art discussion thing just collapsed, and got too convoluted to bother with and just started feeling arbitary.

chan-wook park obviously.

Korine's pretty much lost to his crack habit now, isn't he?

Miike's a good contender - he's a product of the modern straight-to-video marketplace while still working with a personal vision and crossing over to 'art' audiences. (now that I write that, it's not cutting-edge so much as updating Japanese methodology of the '50s/'60s for today, but no one has been so successful recently)

You're kidding with this question, right?

no.

Then perhaps you should explain what "edge" you want cut, what "ground" you want broken. Ryan was getting at this above.

Something can only be pioneering in retrospect. You're not a pioneer unless it later becomes populated with people who want to look back and say, "Ah, yes, those are the people who were pioneering what we are doing today."

Otherwise: As I recall, The Phantom Menace was the movie that pushed a lot of theatres to get digital projections, which allowed all sorts of later films to be made, distributed, and shown, and therefore it's probably the most pioneering and cutting-edge film of the last 10, maybe 20 years.

I said nothing about pioneering, because as you mentioned, this necessitates future works to compare it to. I said "cutting-edge", which simply means who is pushing the boundaries of cinema. And if that isn't blatantly obvious, then apparently there haven't been many cutting-edge directors lately.

I'm looking for directors who are creating works that are completely original, that challenge pre-conceived notions of what a film is. Films that you can watch, without retrospect or hindsight, and say "i don't what that was, I have no frame of reference to compare that to, but it was completely new." Most of the directors I named above have achieved that, at least in their early works.

You said: Who do you think is cinema's greatest living pioneer?

And then you said:

Films that you can watch, without retrospect or hindsight, and say "i don't what that was, I have no frame of reference to compare that to, but it was completely new."

This sounds like it has more to do with the ignorance of the viewer than any ground-breaking-ness of the director. I would suggest that for any director you can think of whose work is "ground breaking", that someone (someone better versed in film history than I am) could show you the context it came out of, the frame of reference where it makes sense.

Although maybe that's the "retrospect and hindsight" you were talking about? Surely any film without retrospect and hindsight is ground-breaking... but I'm not really sure what that could mean.

Here's a short list -

Miike
Kurosawa (K, not A)
Greenaway
Godard (still)
Michael Snow
Chris Marker

Believe it ot not, I'd pick Michael Mann for his use of Digital in Collateral, plus his shot composition in that, Heat and The Insider were incredible (forget about Ali).

somewhat new (34 y/o, 4 films) and cutting edge:

jia zhang-ke

i'd recommend platform (zhantai), unknown pleasures (ren xiao yao), xiao wu, and the world (shijie).

"Although maybe that's the "retrospect and hindsight" you were talking about? Surely any film without retrospect and hindsight is ground-breaking... but I'm not really sure what that could mean. "

Don't get sucked into the post-modernist curse of "everything has a forebearer; everything has a reference point". Cinema is BARELY over 100 years old---it's an incredibly young art, and the only thing that keeps it from proceeding is defeatist ideas that "everything's been done before".

It seems like a lot of the choices have been for Asian directors, which is not a surprise--cutting edge films usually come from areas where political strife/censorship/cultural revolution are occuring, and this is true for most of Asia right now. I'm FAR behind on my modern Asian cinema, and that's a shame.

I don't think the idea that all films have contexts and reference points implies that "everything's been done before".

Darren Aronofsky? Really? I find him to be incredibly heavy-handed.

Guy Maddin, however, is indeed fantastic, and may be a better answer.

otm

I'm no film expert, but do folks here say that David Lynch has lost his edge? I thought Mulholland Drive was about as daring as mainstream cinema gets.

Yeah, he had lost it, but he got it back with that movie.

Takeshi Kitano?

I keep wanting to say Jerry Lewis, but he is not the most "cutting-edge" (why the quotes in the thread title?), only the most "licking-edge."

I guess he currently isn't working too much either.

I agree with Lynch as a good candidate. He owes a lot to the surrealists, but he also has a style and technique that is all his own.

Considering I left this fairly open-ended, I would say that the most influencial motion media creators have went from

Documentary Filmmakers (50's)----> Experimental filmmakers (60's)-----> Video Artists (70's)-----> Music Video Directors (80's and 90's) --------> Web and Motion Graphics Designers (Today).

Most of the innovative work I see being made today in the field of moving pictures is created by motion graphics houses (who often do the opening credits for films). Companies doing web & TV ads seem to be making some incredible imagery and seem to pioneer a lot of the styles & FX being used in Hollywood films. Is just a matter of time before we have our first "vector based" movie? ***shudder to think****

someone who's also an editor, obv

Not necessarily, but I don't know of many good directors who don't oversee the editing of their films. I think editing as an art has been lost on studio films--it's simply editing to keep a continuous or non-linear storyline, not to create new forms, imagery and emotions. As much as I hate action films, I have to admit that they're probably the most cutting-edge in terms of editing techniques (of course they're all stolen from motion graphics firms, but....)

After reviewing this list again, my choice is probably Gaspar Noe. The stylization & attempts to make create not only only an overwhelming emotional, visceral & psychological experience, but a physiological filmgoing experience as well is admirable & very innovative.

I'd say Takaishi Miike and Paul WS Anderson. Not the pretentious time -waster, but the great man who did the amazing Resident Evil and wondrous Alien vs Predator.

I'm only being a bit ironic.

Oh--Catherine Breillot.

Michael Bay's movies are still at least ten years ahead of the music videos which (a) they're forever being compared to, and (b) increasingly have an effect on "respectable" filmmaking.

Also, I know My Sassy Girl was adapted from an internet novel - wasn't Windstruck the same? If that's the case, then Jae-Young Kwak has to get some dap for trying to marry the internet to movies in a way different from sci-fi off-jacking.

Noe as physiological filmmaker's an interesting choice, but people have been using subsonic frequencies and long takes to physically involve the audience for a while now. I tend to prefer Fincher's attempts at it, if only because they're so much more fun (although getting Thomas Bangalter to soundtrack your movie > putting Pixies songs on your movie soundtracks).